The future of the web

Posted on May 2, 2008 by jimhenderson

200805020813.jpg

The BBC technology site has an interesting article looking at where the web might be leading. They invited a range of experts and luminaries from within in the web community to comment on how they see the web developing . They make a range of predictions as to the future developments for the web. Their thoughts are interesting as we need to look ahead about the type of technology we will adopt and the way we may be using it with pupils in the future. These musing look forward perhaps to the next iteration of Glow and have a real bearing on the way local authorities and national education organisation procure and manage technology.

From the contributions a few key trends are identified.

  • The development and exponential growth of social networking.
  • The move towards a semantic web.
  • The growth of user generated content, 80% of all content now generated is user generated and only 20% is enterprise.
  • The move towards accessing the web via mobile devices.
  • The race by the big web and computing companies to develop cloud computing.
  • Ubiquitous access to the web.

Filed under: Education, Technology, Web 2.0 | Tagged: , , , ,

« Podcasting in Plain English Highland and Websense. »

One Response to “The future of the web”

  1. John Connell, on May 2nd, 2008 at 10:05 am Said:

    Interesting piece that I had only glanced at before reading your own post, Jim, so thanks for the pointer to the content.

    I’ve heard Robert Cailliau speak in the past - a very intelligent commentator on such issues, and Tim Berners-Lee’s collaborator at CERN on the origins of the Web (actually, I think he is a more astute commentator that Berners-Lee). I like his caution over the Semantic Web or Web 3.0 - he writes:

    “In much less than 15 years I think we need to figure out what the social impact is going to be of the Semantic web. I am not sure this is a good thing.
    I don’t know who is controlling it. And because it works by ontologies, who decides on what basis I am going to see things?”

    I’m unconvinced by the tentative notion, so far, of the Semantic Web - for me it harks back a little to much to some of the ‘promises’ that were once made on behalf of AI - and I don’t believe such promises are any more likely to be fulfilled now than in the past.

Leave a Reply